As a hand drying device for drying a wet hand after washing, an apparatus has been known with which a user inserts a hand into a drying chamber surrounded by a wall having a vertical cross section formed substantially in a U-shape or a C-shape and blows a water droplet off of the hand by a high-pressure air stream to dry the hand. In such a hand drying device, as the inside of the drying chamber is not sufficiently bright with light (illumination light) from ambient light or the like in a space where the hand drying device is installed due to the shape of the wall of the drying chamber, the drying chamber is dark so that the user feels uncomfortable when inserting the hand into the drying chamber.
Patent Literature 1 describes a hand drying device that includes a lighting unit for lighting up a bottom portion of a drying chamber. Specifically, this hand drying device turns the lighting unit bright when a hand detecting signal is output from a sensor to brightly light up the bottom portion of the drying chamber, and dims the lighting unit when the hand detecting signal is not output from the sensor to dimly light up the bottom portion of the drying chamber. With this configuration, the hand drying device described in Patent Literature 1 can dispel the discomfort of a user when inserting a hand into the drying chamber while illuminating the drying chamber with lower power consumption as compared to a case where the illuminating unit is constantly turned bright on.
Patent Literature 2 describes a hand drying device that includes a light source in a nozzle. According to Patent Literature 2, as an optical path of illumination light from the light source matches a flow path of an air blown from the nozzle, it is possible to expose a wet hand to the air blown from the nozzle effectively by simply exposing a wet hand to the illumination light.